(P2): Aging Taxpayers

Our society is aging and the income of people beyond a certain age drops, meaning fewer tax payments and fewer resources for the supports our community depends on for a free life of real choice. This problem is compounded because aging eventually brings with it additional functional and intellectual disability and a consequent need for supports.

Even political victories about resources that go into supports are usually translated into bureaucratic and administrative costs that arise from the denial or restriction of supports. So, not only do we need more support, but the natural behavior of our bureaucratic system is to increase administrative costs as a way of “reducing” the costs of supports.

The only way to reduce the impact of aging on tax revenues is to have a large group of young people join our society and work over decades, as happened after the second world war. Because of the current administration’s views on immigration, that isn’t going to happen, and even the previous default immigration policies were only moderately more supportive of immigration.

No American immigration policy in the recent past would materially affect the process of lost tax revenues caused by an aging population.